The 5-Step Evolution of a Mobile Marketer

Wondering where your company stands in the mobile marketing landscape? Whether you’re just getting your feet wet or are at the top of your game, always up for a chance to swap war stories over a round of drinks with other thought leaders in the space, we’ll help you assess your current mobile marketing presence and offer recommendations for what you can do next to advance your strategy and execution. Here are the five stages of mobile marketing.

Stage 1: Newbie mobile marketer

As newcomers to mobile marketing, you and your company understand the value of mobile but you haven’t developed your strategy or executed it yet.

Current mobile marketing presence

Your mobile footprint is nonexistent or limited, but you’re eager to get started. You understand the majority of your customer base is likely to become mobile first (if they aren’t there already), and you’re trying to get your company and your marketing efforts to be mobile-first minded, too.

Stage 2: Advanced beginner mobile marketer

Your company is pushing forward: You’re now marketing to customers across channels with a mobile-focused mindset. But most likely you’re doing all of this without a customer relationship management platform and without a cross-channel automation platform, or without automation at all, which means you’re likely sending the same or similar communications to all your users, regardless of device or customer type. It’s time to get comfortable with understanding what makes each of your customers unique and how they engage with your company across devices, and make that work for your mobile marketing efforts.

Stage 3: Intermediate mobile marketer

At this level, your company has amassed a mobile audience, you’re marketing across channels with mobile in mind, you have a CRM in place to track user journeys and develop customer profiles, but most likely you need to better understand how to hang onto those hard-earned users. That means better understanding the analytics, KPIs, and the long-term game with retention marketing. And as new marketing channels emerge, you have even more work to do: You have to become an expert at push notifications, in-app messaging, News Feed Cards, and more.

Current mobile marketing presence

You understand multichannel marketing and customer lifecycles, and you’re developing customer profiles, but you’re getting stuck on measuring your efforts—and keeping at-risk customers. What are the app metrics and KPIs that matter most? How can you track successes and replicate them? You’ll need to answer these questions before your company will truly be seasoned at mobile marketing.

Stage 4: Seasoned mobile marketer

At this stage, you’re looking ahead to what the future of mobile marketing will be inclusive of, like IoT and virtual reality marketing.

Current mobile marketing presence

You know your customers and how they behave across channels, and you’re marketing to them with ease. You understand what your engagement looks like, and you’re working hard on your long-term retention marketing game. You’re looking to learn new channels, like web push, and thinking ahead to IoT marketing.

Stage 5: Master mobile marketer

At this stage, you’re not wondering what’s next, you’re defining what’s next: You’re a leading pioneer in the industry.

Current mobile marketing presence

A a leader at the head of the pack of mobile marketing professionals, when we say, “Web,” you say “Already pushing.” When we say, “VR,” you don’t say “What’s next?”, you say, “I’m already thinking of what’s beyond that!”

Next steps for advancing to the next level in mobile marketing

You’re at the top of the industry, and you’re in good company. For your next move, consider joining your peers and Appboy at upcoming mobile marketing industry events!

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Mary Kearl is a writer and digital strategist, who has led email, social media, and content marketing for several brands. She has helped launch six mobile apps and one niche social network and is always up for a good Netflix/Hulu/Amazon Prime binge recommendation or travel tip.